Kieran Shannon: Cork’s 1990 double can be equalled but never bettered
Today, Wednesday, September 16, marks the 30th Anniversary of the historic 'Double Senior All Ireland ' Victories of 1990 – when both Cork senior teams made history by capturing both the Liam MacCarthy and Sam Maguire trophies. Pictured at Pairc Uí Chaoimh swapping the famous trophies are captains Tomás Mulcahy (hurling captain, on right) and Larry Tompkins (football captain). Picture: Brian Lougheed
Thirty years on and the noise that rang around Croke Park that day still echoes in the mind.
Every All-Ireland triumph is greeted with an outpouring of delight but there is a scale in such matters, normally dictated by how long it was since a county last went up the steps of the Hogan and their margin of victory on the day.
Kerry 2004, it would be fair to say, was on the more sedate end of such things, even if the pitch was a sea of green and gold afterwards: in truth that final against Mayo had been over 10 minutes before halftime once Colm Cooper goaled while it had been only four years since Sam had last been handed over to a Kerryman, albeit the intervening four years, with harrowing defeats to Meath, Armagh and Tyrone, had been a testing time for every Kerry man and woman.
Normally that moment of anticipation and ecstasy is at its most heightened when a county is about to have a breakthrough win, to end some famine. Think Kieran McGeeney collapsing to his knees with the ball in hand and Joe Kernan in disbelief turning to the stand and clutching his face. Mickey Harte a year later crying out, “Where’s Michaela?” in the moments before Brian White blew the final whistle. The Hill, Croker, after Cluxton nailed that free in 2011; Tom Condon coming out with that sliotar in 2018, the trigger for Delores and Dreams to resound around Croker.
In that pantheon are the couple of seconds either side of Niall Cahalane stepping back to take a free out off the ground in the 1990 All-Ireland football final.
It might only have been 12 months earlier Cork had also won the Sam Maguire and indeed only a fortnight after another Corkman, Tomás Mulcahy, had been up the steps to receive the Liam McCarthy Cup, but if anything the recency of such victories was why the calls of Blow it Up to F, Ref, were never quite as loud as they were that day, and the sound of that final whistle never sounded as sweet to any support as it did to all Corkonians on September 16, 1990.
Billy’s men had managed to do it. The Double. And Beat Meath.
At the time the latter was as monumental as the former. It’s hard to think of any team in GAA history that simply had to beat a particular opponent more than Cork had to beat Meath that day. You could argue Kerry in 1978 against Dublin, or when they played Tyrone in 2005 or 2008, but even the hurt and shame of the latter two defeats were offset by Kerry coming back the following season to win the All-Ireland.
To this day I can’t think of a more tense time being a Cork supporter than at half-time in that 1990 All-Ireland. Although Cork had played most of the football, they were only a point up and were now a man down, with Colm O’Neill having just been sent off for a reflex slap to Mick Lyons’ jaw. Defeat that couldn’t be countenanced was now staring us in the face.
Fortunately for the supporters, back in the dressing room the players and management had a completely different mindset.
In Larry Tompkins’ new autobiography, Believe, he writes about how the team, well, believed. Paul McGrath was on fire. Their backs and midfield were on top. And no one was making a big deal about O’Neill’s sending off. In his book, he talks about how that wasn’t the way in 1993 against Derry when another Corkman was shown red just before the interval.
“There was too much consoling of Tony [Davis],” he observes, “in contrast to 1990 when you hardly noticed Colm O’Neill had been sent off.” In ’93 at halftime there was a sense the game was over, that they were beaten. In ’90, the overriding sense was that they were simply not going to be beaten.
Cork and Meath were both great teams; only Dublin were within their orbit during that four-year period of ’87 to ‘90 and even then they were a distant third. And because of its significance and intensity and the frequency with which they met, Cork-Meath was a great rivalry.
Unlike virtually all other great historical rivalries, it did not produce a great game, the way Kerry-Dublin did in ’77, and Armagh-Tyrone and Tyrone-Kerry did in 2005, and Dublin-Mayo and Dublin-Kerry did multiple times in the decade just past. It produced more red cards than it did goals; the average scoreline in their four All Ireland final clashes and a hateful league semi-final being 0-13 to 0-11. But what it did produce for the respective fan bases was a couple of the most glorious wins in either county’s history. Few wins have ever been sweeter for Meath than that in ’88 – losing a man in the first half but still finding a way to win. And for the very same reason, none has ever been sweeter in Cork GAA than the one in 1990. Neither game was great but no victory has been greater.
Almost everything about that day now is epic. The late great John Kerins’ save from David Beggy, replicating his clubmate and close friend Ger Cunningham’s save from Martin Naughton in the hurling final a fortnight earlier; the display of the Cork backs that day, as magnificent as any sextet ever has put on in Croke Park; the four points Shay Fahy kicked from midfield in a low-scoring game, something not even Brian Fenton has managed yet; Larry Tompkins kicking the same tally from deadballs even though he played part of the game with a damaged cruciate.
And then there was Teddy. It may not have been his finest game for Cork in an All Ireland football final – after he’d put on an exhibition of fielding in ’87 and ’89 and goaled in ’88 – but it was his finest hour. Well, one of two.
It is hard to know which is the more stunning: that Cork pulled off The Double one year or that they haven’t replicated it since. When Sam Maguire returned to Cork the following night with Liam McCarthy by its side, Larry Tompkins, after exchanging trophies with hurling captain Tomás Mulcahy, remarked from the stage, “I guarantee you tonight, we will not have to wait 100 years again.”
Well, here we are 30 years on and it still hasn’t happened yet, at least with the men, whereas the women have landed six doubles in the last 15 years alone.
Tompkins is right, though. Cork will pull off a double again sometime before 2090. But what we’ll hardly again have is what McCarthy – and Denis Walsh, a starter in both Munster finals that year – pulled off that year.
Although there are large tracts of west Cork that have had little hurling and parts of McCarthy’s east Cork that would openly profess to knife footballs, Corkonians rightfully pride themselves on how diverse and supreme their sporting prowess is.
Another interesting line in Tompkins’ book is how well he knew Roy Keane and how intensely Keane, especially in his Nottingham Forest days, would quiz Tompkins about his preparations for those big games against Kerry and Meath. That same early autumn of 1990 Keane would make his breakthrough in England but even he knew where he stood in the local pantheon in those days.
And he always would. Tompkins recounts how one night in his bar they were talking about all Keane had won at Old Trafford but he talked about the medal that eluded him. “F***it, I didn’t win an All Ireland hurling medal!”
Tompkins felt the remark wasn’t for show but was something deep-felt. Nothing as a Corkman bettered winning Liam McCarthy. And then for Teddy to win Sam as well only two weeks later?
1990 can only be equalled, never bettered.
